Democracy in Action
Team Advisor/PI
Project Description/ Research Team Goals
How are Americans’ experiences of democracy in their daily lives shaping their views on when and how their government is working well? In 1835, Tocqueville suggested that Americans learned how to be democratic through how they organized civil associations together – that one learned the practical insights of how to live democratically alongside other people with different understandings of the world by working with one another for the common good of an organization. Yet he never addressed what exactly Americans say or do with each other in these moments that produces democracy. As an anthropologist of democracy, I want to connect the dots between what people do when they are trying to organize and communicate along egalitarian democratic principles and how their experiences of success and failure affect their understandings of democracy writ large. I am asking: what do everyday Americans learn in practice about working effectively with others in service of a representative democracy by participating in their local political parties and discussing political information publicly? Inspired by Nina Eliasoph’s 1998 book, Avoiding Politics, I study how local political parties organize themselves and how local political publics debate what counts as truth and what constitutes the public good. This allows me to analyze how these everyday practices shape people’s understanding of how best to manage the complicated tasks of making decisions with others based on evidence that must be communally evaluated.
Studying local parties’ organizational structures and grassroots leadership using linguistic anthropological approaches will provide insights into how the ways organizations structure participation has larger implications for how and when people experience decision-making as substantively democratic. My previous research on school board meetings during the pandemic has shown that in order for democracy to function, groups have to be able to ignore some people – some of the time, not all of the time, and in an acceptable enough fashion that the ignored people continue participating. This, on a local interactional level, is the equivalent of political scientist Adam Przeworski’s claim that democracies exist when parties can lose elections. In the United States, local organizations typically turn to procedural rules, such as Robert’s Rules of Order, to manage this particular difficulty. This strategy poses a challenge for both political parties as they try to maintain a big tent approach while simultaneously keeping those activists who are widely understood as extremists from defining the direction of the party. One result has been that many political decisions are structured by how savvy political actors deploy these rules to create procedural listening, instead of substantive listening. Yet the constant public performance of procedural listening shows audiences that some democratic forums don’t encourage a substantive engagement with ideas or even practical problems. I am proposing studying ethnographically how local party organizations, and, in particular, precinct chairs, navigate this dilemma using rules and procedures. This will be the first such qualitative study of democratic rules (such as Robert’s Rules of Order) for interactions, addressing how these rules shape politics and widespread understandings of the contradictions of democracy within local political parties in the US.
While this is my main research, I also have a team conducting research on roommate contracts at Rice, that will function as a subteam. The larger questions are similar -- I am interested in how people use explicit rules and procedures to coordinate with each other, and what work having rules be explicit does in shaping subsequent interaction.
Issues Addressed
I am proposing this research in a moment where 43% of Americans are dissatisfied with both major political parties and where trust in the mass media is reaching new lows. According to a 2025 Gallup survey, 51% of Democrats and only 8% of Republicans have a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of trust and confidence in the mass media to report the news completely and fairly. This dissatisfaction and suspicion raise an urgent question: What aspects of everyday practices generate this sense of brokenness? This research will provide insights about how to change interactions at local levels to encourage a wider range of people to feel as though they are participating in a functional democracy and making meaningful contributions to the common good.
Research Methods and Technology
This mixed-methods research takes advantage of the methodological toolkits of linguistic and cultural anthropology. My research on local democratic practice within political parties will focus on precinct chairs, the lowest level of elected officials in Texas. Every Texas voting precinct has a Democrat and Republican precinct chair –there are 9,849 positions to fill (as many as half are left vacant). These chairs are lynchpins between grassroots voters and the political party, with role specific insights into how to coordinate with others within the framework of a political party. My undergraduate research team will conduct 40-50 oral history interviews with both Democrat and Republican precinct chairs. We will also attend relevant committee meetings, and discuss with participants after the meetings what they understood occurred. We will also attend precinct chair trainings - trainings both on parliamentary procedure and on how to be a precinct chair. Finally, we will run social experiments focused on meeting procedures, introducing different procedural rules for decision making to focus groups of precinct chairs and, after the enactment, debriefing on their thoughts about that set of rules’ effectiveness.
Preferred Undergraduate Interests
Willingness to interview people with perspectives that range the political spectrum
Academic Majors of Interest
Open to all majors
Prior Preparation/Requisite Experience
None required; team members will be trained in how to conduct oral histories
Compensation
Compensation is available. Work study-eligible students may receive compensation from OURI.
Course Credit
ANTH 404
Team Meeting
Once a month on Mondays at 1 (subject to availability)
Actively Onboarding New Members
Yes
Ready to Apply?
Use the linked Google Form to submit your application!
Contact
For more information, please see the team's website or contact Dr. Ilana Gershon (igershon@rice.edu).